Michael Lewis is taking a lot of flak for his new book Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt. I just finished the book and the criticism is silly. Well, perhaps a better way to put it is the criticism is misplaced.

The book tells the true story of some nice Wall Street bankers. I know that’s an oxymoron. But it’s true. They figured out how high-frequency trading (HFT) undermines the honesty of stock prices without adding any value to the system. It creates instability as it breeds distrust. Lewis does a great job of weaving the story of these “honest” bankers together and explaining how they aim to change the way Wall Street does business.

High-frequency trading is often touted as a way to increase liquidity in the market. After reading the book, I don’t buy the reasoning. HFT allows a computer to see a future stock price milliseconds before it becomes public information. Traders leverage the insider information to turn a profit. It’s a rigged game.

Think of it this way. If you are playing dice and you were the only one able to make everything go in slow motion, you’d be able to perceive exactly how the dice are going to land. Just before it finally settles you’d know if it was a six or a one or whatever. Now if you had the technology quick enough to bet a millisecond before the dice landed, you couldn’t lose. That’s high-frequency trading.

Actually, that’s only the tip of the iceberg. Lewis explains a wide variety of ways the investment banks abuse our trust in their fiduciary responsibility. This part is disturbing and frustrating.

So criticism of the book is off base because Lewis is raising very serious concerns. However, criticism of Lewis for portraying the Wall Street system as “rigged” seems, well, if not reasonable at least understandable. The way I’ve seen him and his publisher make these claims is hyperbolic, intent on selling more copies of the book. HFT is a problem and needs to be addressed, but I don’t believe calling all of Wall Street rigged is fair or accurate.

Bottom line, Flash Boys is a good book with helpful information. It will change how I consider investing, and I hope it reshapes how Wall Street behaves. Yeah, I know, but one can live in hope, right?